Enabling direct democracy in a digital age: restoring trust in

politics through technology and cryptography

Background:
Although British democracy is mature, it is flawed and imperfect in its current design. It relies
upon the collective decision making of sitting members of parliament (MP) who each
individually represent the implied views of the voting constituency population they are
elected to serve. This method of representation is implied and to a degree indirect, as a sitting
MP for a constituency may vote on behalf of the population over a period of five years but
does not repeatedly seek consensus on a majority basis for every matter on which they are
called to vote.

In modern British society with mature public services, non-corrupt institutions and a working
rule of law, individuals may find it difficult to see a real difference between, or an option to
vote for change from, the main British political parties today. It is not surprising that modern
western democracies are blighted by a political apathy, especially amongst younger voters,
resulting in low voting turnout at local and general elections in recent years.

However, the recent Scottish referendum has demonstrated that when the people are given the
chance to vote on something other than an election they will seize the opportunity and
become more involved with the political process.

Hypothesis:

Utilising modern information technology and cryptography the democratic channel between
an MP and their constituents can be greatly improved, allowing secure two way
communication and enabling the first truly direct democratic process anywhere in the world.

Proposed methods:

Democracy is derived from the Greek words demos (people) and kratos (power). In a time
before modern telecommunications and computer technology it was not possible to canvas the
individual opinions of each and every voting subject in the country to reach a consensus
during decisions taken at a national level. Instead the nation was divided up into geographical
constituencies and from each an elected representative became an MP to vote on their
constituency members behalf in person. On rare occasions previously national referenda
have been used but these were time consuming and costly to perform.

At present communication between an MP and constituency members may occur in person

via weekly surgeries or remotely via postal mail, telephone, email or social media such as
twitter or facebook. Whilst useful, this is highly inefficient, making the views of only few
vocal members of the constituency known to the MP, leaving the views of the quiet majority
unknown.

The rise of the internet and widespread use of smart mobile phones allows near instant
communication between individuals regardless of geographical location at virtually no cost. It
was estimated in 2013 that 72% of Britons now own a smartphone, a rise of 14% on the
previous year. With such technological advancements the old model of implied representation
without consensus is becoming outdated. It is now trivial to implement a direct democratic
process between constituency members and their MP, one which allows secure real-time
consensus to be obtained at extremely low cost.

Design:
At the heart of such a direct democratic system is a secure database linking voters to their MP,
featuring cryptographically secure communications via the internet to constituents mobile

smartphones. There are currently 650 sitting MPs each representing around 98,000 people of
which 68,000 are eligible to vote. Thus the database and bandwidth of the server must be able
to cope with of the order of 68,000 unique connections within a short space of time. (fig 1.)

Cryptography:
In order to maintain security during communication between MP and constituent (via the
database) over an insecure open medium such as the internet, assymetric or public key
cryptography is necessary. This allows information from the MP (database) to be encrypted
with the constituents public key, which is only decipherable by the recipient in possession of
the correct private key, thus maintaining confidentiality. Similarly information passing from
constituent to MP (database) is signed with the constituents private key and the authenticity
of such communication can be verified with the public key held on the server. In fact both
confidentiality and authenticity can be maintained in both directions at all times by both
signing and encrypting messages each time with a private and public key. (fig 2.)

At the point of creation the database is seeded with randomly generated public and private
key pairs for each eligible user. A letter containing the private key printed in words and in the
graphical form of a QR code is automatically created for every eligible voter in the

constituency and the private keys deleted from the server irreversibly. Each letter also
contains a second printed public key and QR code for the MP as well as a secure web link to
download the Direct Democracy App on their smartphone.

Consensus:

The aim of the process is to allow interested constituents to collectively voice their opinion on
any votes or decisions that are taking place, and make that vote count. A vote that has been
circulated to all users of the Direct Democracy App will receive a response comprising a mix
of replies. The server sorts these and once a majority decision has been calculated the MP and
constituents are informed of the results via an update alert. This keeps the system open, fair
and transparent to scrutiny.

MP user experience:

The MP is able to send out secure messages to all constituents registered for the Direct
Democracy App. They can receive secure messages from individual constituents. Votes or
important local matters for debate can be circulated easily to all constituents. These can be
open ended or time locked to expire at a certain timestamp.

Constituent user experience:

The constituent receives the previously described letter following the initial mailshot. By
following the web link they install the Direct Democracy App for their smartphone and load
the QR codes for their own private key and the MP public key into the App following the
simple instructions. This process takes less than a minute.

Within the App they can write personal messages to the MP which are then cryptographically
proven to come from the constituent alone and in turn can only be read by the MP.

When a vote is to take place in the House of Parliament the constituent will receive a phone
alert detailing the upcoming vote and allowing an appropriate option to be selected (in favour,
against, abstain for example) and this is messaged securely back to the server to allow a
consensus to be formed.

Discussion:

It can be plainly seen that that digital technology is highly disruptive. But disruption brings
with it improvements and the power of information technology in the modern age allows the

potential of true democracy to be brought to the people for the first time in history. It is not a
matter of if this technology is implemented, rather it is a matter of when and how this occurs.

A pilot scheme in a single constituency could be implemented and tested at modest cost to
experiment with the concept and what potential lies within it in the future. The strength of
such a pilot scheme is that it does not alter the basic structure of British democracy in this
first iteration, instead providing proof-of -concept for the creation of a working real-time
direct democratic channel between the individual and the State. It does not require much
imagination to see that such an approach could be easily scaled to a National level, potentially
removing the need for a representation layer in the political process entirely, and enabling the
creation of a true direct democracy.

Drawbacks of such an idea are that it is heavily reliant upon registered voters owning and
being competent to use an internet enabled smartphone device. This is a valid criticism,
however with every year that passes the general British population becomes more accepting
of technology and such devices are becoming almost ubiquitous in every day life.

It is our hope that this proposal could be a small step towards reinvigorating British politics
from its recent apathy, especially amongst the younger more techno-centric strata of society in
the first instance.